Ando, the blurb on the back of the book tells us, is "an Expressive Art
Therapist", and her deck "uses the medium of collage to express her vision of
our complex multi-dimensional existence" and "presents a universal mythology for
our time." That says it all--summing up the problems I have with this deck and
touching on the few things I do like. How this deck is "universal" beats me, not
to mention the dichotomy set up joining that word to the word "mythology", often
a set of stories from a personal perspective. His story or her story, its SOMEbody's
story.

Let's talk technical for a minute. I find the deck too small and the art, or
rather the blending of images here is a bit on the untenable side. The collaging technique
used looks a little sloppy, especially in comparision to other decks that employ the
collaging method including Dali, Voyager and Rohrig.

There's also a problem of gender representation, or so some people feel. My friend
Angela, who has very strong feelings about art and gender representation finds most
objectionable the presentation of women here--i.e., are pre-Raphaelite fin de siecle
paintings of women a bit too much on the idealized side for us to live up to, she asks? I
know Ando is trying to be playful here, but don't these captions from her Five of Wands,
Female: "Romance...is that too much to ask for?, Male: "Man! This chick is
uptight!", seem a bit corny? Or on the level of primetime sitcom? Not that I don't
think this is an apt representation of our culture's level of sophistication when it comes
to Love, especially in comparison with say the 13th century French poem cycle, the Romance
of the Rose.

Well, let's sojourn into the guts of all this. Ando, speaking of myths, repeats the one
about the gypsies bringing Tarot into Europe during the 14th century. Check, please!

So much for research into Tarot history. Ando's system is pretty straightforward, and
I've seen worse and more derivative of other decks, but this deck's card attributions,
trump explanations, and suit implications just don't grab me. And don't get me wrong, I've
seen worse art--for instance, I find Connolly quite insipid--all those smiling faces and
beautiful young people with perfect skin! No one looks like that on Monday morning, I'm
sorry. But back to this deck. One thing--I also fail to see how its
"transformational". When I think of people I would like to see transformed, I
fail to see how much this deck can help. Maybe it could be a tool that a skilled therapist
could use, along with some prescriptions, depending on the person, but really the real
work has to be done by the patient. Coming from a family of alcoholics, I should know!

Which brings us to the purpose behind this deck. Of the reasons she gives, the most
convincing was that she "found it increasingly more frustrating to use other people's
images, symbols & interpretations." She is indeed nothing if not independent with
the latter two, but the former?! This whole deck is nothing but a mix of borrowed images!
Anyhow, she goes on to say she has her particular way of relating this to her "study
of spirituality and Jungian psychology." IMHO, there are better decks for that,
including Voyager, even with its pretensious vogue-ing as now an alchemical deck, now a
dessert topping.